Review of Olive Co-operative’s work, 2003 – 2007

Olive Co-operative was set up as a workers’ co-operative at the end of 2003 as an inspired way of helping the cause of peace and justice in Palestine and Israel.

Jo Bird’s vision and determination got Olive off the ground, and before long Olive was achieving its goal, guided study tours to Palestine and Israel.

We’ve now had three full years of trading during which we’ve expanded our range of activities.  It seems a good time to review what’s been achieved as we continue in our work.

We also want to thank everyone who makes our work possible, especially all those we work with in Israel and Palestine, who maintain a positive attitude, despite the increasingly unbearable and restrictive situations they’re forced to live and work in.

In particular, thanks are due to our partner organisation in Palestine, the Alternative Tourism Group whose commitment to socially responsible tourism is outstanding.

Mission

Olive’s mission is  ‘responsible tourism, fair trade and education in the Middle East’.

Our motivation stems from the belief that it is by witnessing the Israel and Palestine conflict at first hand and by meeting with the individuals living in those circumstances that change and real understanding can be achieved.

We are committed to working for positive change, through awareness raising and through the provision of fair trade economic opportunities for Palestinians.

Activities

Responsible Tourism

We enable individuals from the UK to meet with those working for peace and justice on both sides of the conflict and to visit Palestinian towns now rarely accessed.

Over the past three years, we’ve taken over 150 people to Israel and Palestine, and hope we’ll have taken 200 by the end of this year.  On average this has worked out as about one tour every two months.

Those who’ve chosen to go on our study tours have come from a wide range of communities and experiences.  They’ve included people of faith, Muslims, Jews and Christians as well as people of no faith.  Political beliefs have also been diverse, with long time political campaigners as well as those with no political background.  They’ve come from a variety of countries including Spain, USA, UK and Ireland, their ages ranging from 17 to over 70.

But they’ve had the shared aim of visiting Israel and Palestine within a group setting, to discover the situation at first hand.  They’ve enjoyed the support provided by travelling as part of a group, with an Olive tour guide leading them, sharing experiences and knowledge.

We’re aware that it can be daunting to travel to the region, not only for those for whom it is a first visit abroad.  At our Manchester office we provide advice and support to tour customers prior to, during and after a tour.  Pre-tour meetings have been arranged in the UK, to discuss any concerns with the tour guide.  We also aim to facilitate each tour member’s requests, and take tour members’ wishes into account when confirming itineraries.

Our tours have been tailored to particular aims.  For example, we ran a health tour in September 2005 where tour members met with health sector workers in Israel and Palestine.  They visited organisations such as the Health, Development, Information and Policy Insitute in Ramallah and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel in Tel Aviv.

Other tours have seen tour members spending the day with Palestinian farmers, assisting them with their olive harvest; staying with Palestinian families, hearing their stories; having lunch with Mordechai Vanunu; witnessing the negative effects of Israeli settlements in Nablus; chatting to activists in the Salon Mazal social centre in Tel Aviv; learning Arabic in Beit Sahour; meeting with the mayor of Abu Dis; visiting a YWCA project in Jericho and much much else besides.

In addition, we’ve developed bespoke tours.  For example, in summer 2005 a couple from the UK travelled to Jenin to meet a child they’d been sponsoring, and made long-anticipated visits to the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem and other historical/religious sites in Palestine.

Another successful bespoke tour took place in April 2006.  This was initiated by a group of Jewish peace activists from Leicester who wanted to visit organisations they’d been in touch with and supported over a long period of time.  They opened out their tour to others from all backgrounds, and in the end 19 people travelled together.  They visited a range of places, individuals and organisations, including the Palestinian village of Yanoun, an SOS Children’s Orphanage in Bethlehem and Israeli refuseniks in Jerusalem.

Our ability to organise and develop specific study tours to Israel and Palestine has stemmed from our combined extensive first hand knowledge of the region, which is wide-ranging and always right up to date.  From this, we’ve been able to make informed judgements about travelling to certain areas difficult to access, keeping the safety of our tour customers paramount.

The success of our tours has been such that tour customers have been consistently positive about their experiences.  This is something we’re very proud of.  We’re delighted that our work has enabled people to have what they’ve described as ‘life-changing’ experiences, and that it’s enabled people to travel to Palestine who wouldn’t otherwise have been able to, as demonstrated by this former customer:

Being part of an Olive tour allowed me to go places, meet people and experience things that I would not have felt comfortable doing - or even considered doing - on my own. Olive’s track record made me feel safe - not just in terms of physical safety but knowing I was being considered as an individual: I felt looked after, not treated like a customer

As a result of our tours, people have felt motivated and informed to take action and work for change on return to their home country.  This has clearly been a positive boost for those organisations and individuals we visit in Palestine and Israel.

Fair Trade

Our awareness that the Palestinian economy has been decimated by Israeli-imposed restrictions on movement and by conflict means that we’re continually working to develop ways for fairly trading with Palestinians.

We provide an outlet for Palestinian tourism, and strive on our tours to accomodate our tour customers either in Palestinian-owned hotels or on a B&B basis with Palestinian families.  Wherever possible and relevant, we use Palestinian guides and transport.

We’re also developing a UK market for Palestinian products.   At first Olive workers operated solely from their homes, then in 2005 we rented our office in Bridge-5 Mill, Manchester.  In our tiny premises we work at two desks surrounded by large quantities of olive oil and other Palestinian merchandise, stacked up all around us. Renting this office has marked a big stage in the development of the fair trade retail part of our work.

We keep our office open as a shop for two days/week on average.  This has allowed us to sell more effectively Palestinian olive oil, supplied to us by Zaytoun, the UK importers of Palestinian olive oil. We sell the largest quantity of Palestinian olive oil in the North West, to a range of agents and individual consumers.

In 2005, in partnership with Zaytoun, we also provided some of the initial logistical preparation for a Chester-based businessman’s ultimately successful initiative to test-run an overland route for the import of Palestinian olive oil from Jenin via Jordan and Syria to the UK.

Our work in Israel and Palestine meant that we were meeting with a range of Palestinian producers who were struggling under the weight of Israeli restrictions to find a market for their products.  Slowly, we began to buy at retail price directly from Palestinians products.  We now have links with 20 Palestinian suppliers, and intend to develop this aspect to our work further.

Since 2003, we’ve also visited a wide range of events holding stalls at which we’ve sold our merchandise and met a range of customers, developing links and raising awareness. In late 2005, the retail side of our work expanded with the launch of our online shop.

Visitors to our online shop will see a wide range of products for sale, such as books, CDs and handicrafts.  We stock the ground-breaking guidebook written by ATG ‘Palestine and Palestinians’, and books produced jointly by Israeli/Palestinian peace and justice organisations, for example the Alternative Information Centre.

Handicrafts include olive wood products made by the Holy Land Co-operative in Beit Sahour and ceramics produced by Atfaluna in Gaza.  The Atfaluna Centre for Deaf Children in Gaza is both a medical and an educational facility for deaf children from the Gaza Strip.  Products sold by Atfaluna support its crucial work with deaf children, and also provide employment for deaf adults and for families of deaf children.  The Deheishe Women’s Collective is another example of one of our suppliers: this is a women’s organisation based in the Deheishe refugee camp in Bethlehem, which provides employment for women and also ensures the maintenance of aspects of Palestinian cultural heritage.

In May 2006, we helped set up a new project in partnership with the Jenin-based Palestine Fair Trade Association and the UK-based Zaytoun, called ‘Trees for Life’.  This is a non-profit initiative which Olive administers.  Through it, individuals in the UK donate money (at least £20) to be used in Palestine by the PFTA in planting trees.  So far, we’ve raised over £20,000 resulting in more than 5,000 olive trees being planted in Palestine.

Education

We consider that every aspect of our work is an education, both to ourselves and to those we work with.

Our website, which was greatly extended in 2006, provides a free resource with large quantities of continually updated information and advice contained within its pages.

Here, people can access extensive guidance notes on travelling to Israel and Palestine, find links to other organisations in Palestine and Israel and be informed by detailed accounts of former tour customers.  They can find ways to work with Olive, or subscribe to the Olive news alerts, or buy books and magazines giving in-depth perspectives on the situation in Israel and Palestine.

We receive dozens of queries through our info@olivecoop.com address, on a huge range of issues which we answer to the best of our ability, or forward to a more relevant organisation.

We’ve also always publicised the situation in Israel and Palestine, and worked to lessen stereotypes.  We’ve done this through speaking at a huge range of events and to a wide variety of audiences.  We’ve talked about the impact of economic restrictions imposed by the Israelis on the Palestinians; about the positive work being carried out in developing fair trade links with Palestinians; about the olive harvest; about visiting the region and what it’s like there.   We’ve also arranged fundraising events for specific causes in Palestine.  As a result of these efforts, people have been, for example, further motivated to actively support an organisation working for peace or to visit Palestine and Israel themselves.

We’ve taken the initiative in organising a range of educational events.  For example, we organised an International Women’s Day event in Manchester in 2006 where we enabled women in Palestine and the UK to link up via videolink and to discuss the impact of fair trade on their lives and to share experiences.

At one of the events in 2005 to mark the publication of the Palestine and Palestinians guidebook, academics and laypeople shared knowledge at the University of Manchester Museum in a free afternoon of talks about Palestinian culture, heritage and literature.

We’re currently running Arabic classes in Manchester, focused on speaking Palestinian Arabic, encouraging people to communicate directly with Palestinians.

We’re also proud that we’ve taken a number of journalists on our tours who’ve written cutting edge pieces for the mainstream press on their return.  A series of articles in the Metro newspaper, including a rare interview with Mordechai Vanunu, brought knowledge of the situation in Palestine and Israel to a huge variety of people it’d otherwise be difficult to reach.

Articles have been written by other journalists in a range of other publications including the magazine of the Department for International Development and the Morning Star.

We’re delighted that we’ve been able to provide bursaries for travel to Israel and Palestine, for those who wouldn’t otherwise be able to go on our tours.  Bursary holders have committed to raising awareness on their return to the UK, and have consistently managed to do this.  For instance, a former bursary holder gave a talk to a group of UK human rights barristers on what she’d seen when on an Olive study tour.

Some further information

Income and expenditure

Both income and expenditure have risen steadily in each full year of trading.  Salary costs for UK Olive staff remain consistently at just over 20% of our annual expenditure, and all Olive members work on a part time basis.  Most of our income is spent directly in Palestine.

A few of the many people and organisations we’re grateful to:

We’ve been continually energised by the range of experiences and knowledge of all those who’ve worked as part of Olive.  Olive members over the past three years include:

Siama A.; Jo Bird; Heather Gardner; Jill Harris; Xen Hasan; Mary Horbury; Sarah Irving; Vivienne Jackson; Jimmy Johnson; Rami Kassis; Leonie Nimmo; Lee Nixey; Anan Quzmar; Andrew Read; Andree Ryan

We’ve also benefited hugely from a wide range of wonderful people who’ve volunteered for Olive or who’ve worked for us on a casual basis or who’ve guided our tours, including:

Carol Archer; Rica Bird; Ruth Bromnick; Carolyn Gelenter; Lorna Title; Bex Tyrer; Marisca van der Vaart

Others have provided crucial financial support in the form of donations and loanstock.

All the people at Merci, Bridge-5 Mill, Manchester, where we rent our office, also contribute much including patience in putting up with all sorts of queries and deliveries.

In Palestine and Israel we’re lucky enough to work with and/or visit a huge range of organisations and individuals, all of whom are inspiring.   Just to mention a very few:

Christian Peacemakers Team, Hebron; From a different viewpoint – tours along fences; Health, Development, Information and Policy Institute, Ramallah; Ibdaa Cultural Centre, Deheishe Refugee Camp, Bethlehem; Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions; Palestine Fair Trade Association, Jenin; Physicians for Human Rights-Israel; Project Hope, Nablus; Sindyanna, Kufr Kana; YWCA, Jericho; Women for Life, Salfit; Al-Zaytouna, Salfit

It’s particularly great to work with our partner organisation in Palestine, the Alternative Tourism Group and all its staff members, especially Samer Kokaly, who continually provide such a great standard of care to our customers.

Looking to the future

We love the way our work has expanded, developed and changed over the past three years.  The motivation of our members has allowed us to continue and develop our work.

All the time we’re constantly questioning how far our activities meet our mission statement, how well we’re achieving our aims and how best to carry out our work.  At the moment, we’re looking at how to ensure tours provide the maximum income possible for our Palestinian partner and suppliers, at extending the scope of our tours and at working to sell and market more effectively Palestinian fairly traded products.

It’s a challenging area to work in, as we try to maintain positive perspectives on an area of the world where things often seem to get worse, not better.

The determination of everyone we work with, in Palestine, Israel and the UK keeps us all going, as we all work together doing whatever’s feasible in the promotion of a just peace and a viable economy for Palestinians.